AI EXTINCTION--Future Shock in the Post-Paleocybernetic Age-ALVIN TOFFLER 1965

     Gene Youngblood, in his book Expanded Cinema, notes in the chapter titled, "Radical Evolution and Future Shock in the Paleocybernetic Age,"

      "As the physicist P. W. Bridgman once said, the true meaning of a term is found by observing what a man does with it, not what he says about it." (1)

     That word he referred to was "revolution." Further down, Youngblood paraphrases Alvin Toffler from Horizon Magazine (1965), 

      "Toffler observes that no reasonable man should plan his life beyond ten years; even that, he says, is risky. When parents speak of their sons becoming lawyers they are deceiving themselves and their sons, according to the sociologist, 'Because we have no conception of what being a lawyer will mean twenty years hence. Most probably, lawyers will be computers.' "

    The very concept of artificial intelligence extinction (AI Extinction) appears to be encapsulated in Youngblood's vision of the future, by a glimpse into the past of Toffler's worldview. He asserts computer programmers will be "obsolete," because "computers will reprogram and even regenerate themselves." A closer look at Toffler in 1965 gives an even more bizarre look into no longer the "paleocybernetic," but "post-paleocybernetic," age. 

Futurist writer Alvin Toffler's Horizon article appeared in the Sacramento Bee in late November 1965, under the headline "Avalanche of Changes, Says Writer, Carries Threat for Unprepared Society."

     

1.) Youngblood, Gene. Expanded Cinema: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. 1st ed., Fordham University Press, 2020. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvnwbz7q. Accessed 3 June 2023.